What to Do When Your Fans Stop Listening

Silent film star Charlie Chaplin would have totally loved the Facebook video era — nearly 85 percent of all videos on social media are viewed without sound. Coupled with ever-shortening attention spans and the advent of auto-play, it’s harder than ever to get your audience engaged in your videos. This isn’t just a millennial thing either. People of all ages are stopping to watch – but not listen – to videos on their social network feeds. Yet many videos are created with moving music or vibrant voiceover in mind.

Caption That! If you already have an awesome video with sound and voiceover, get the most views by creating closed captions for your videos. Pro Tip – YouTube generates these automatically for most videos. You’ll just need to do a bit of tweaking and then you can download to use on other social networks. Facebook reports that adding captions increased the average watch time of a video by 12 percent, so it’s a must in this auto-play era.

Client example:

Use Your Words. Take a page from the silent era and include any vital information on-screen as text.